the evolution of the obituary

The Evolution of the ObituaryWhite Paper

Last Updated:January 2013 Please Visit Us:www.tributes.com

Please Contact Us:Tributes, Inc.192 South St., 5th FloorBoston, MA 02111(617) 337-9440

Because Every Life Has a Story

2 The Evolution of the Obituary.

Testimonials

Bob Bigginsformer nfda president, magoun-biggins funeral home

Tributes.com has changed the way our community looks at obituaries. The seamless integration into our website allows our online audience to engage with a state-of-the-art multimedia obituary and to browse and learn about their friends, neighbors or loved ones. Without question our partnership with Tributes has generated more positive results for our community than any other endeavor in the past three years.

Rodolfo Sanezsenior vice president marketing, forest lawn

At Forest Lawn we are continually looking for ways to move our business forward, in particular our approach surrounding online obituaries. After careful consideration, we selected Tributes.com as our obituary platform provider. From their products to its rapidly developing obituary distribution, we know that Tributes will be a true technology partner.

Frank Joycefuneral director waltham, ma

No one ever complimented us on our website until Tributes.com hosted our obituaries – and they are the most read pages on our site. As more families were opting away from a $300 newspaper notice, we had to find a better option. Providing an Eternal Tribute to every family honors, remembers and celebrates their lives in ways a paper obituary could never do. Isn’t that what we’re all about?


Bruce Buchananprincipal, flanner-buchanan funeral centers

We didn’t want a boiler plate obituary program, so when Tributes.com came along we abandoned our self-made program and jumped on board. We received excellent training and launched within a matter of weeks. We were able to transfer our existing obituaries to the Tributes network, which was a must-have. Our belief is that Tributes will keep us ahead of the curve as social networking replaces outdated funeral websites.

© 2013 Tributes, Inc. Tributes.com is a registered trademark. 33

he professional goal of death care is to provide comprehensive and compassionate customer service

to those in your community who call upon you in the darkest moments of their lives; the business

goal of death care is to generate revenue. These two diverse goals are not mutually exclusive. You

or someone on your staff may well remember the days when it was simply enough to provide ample

parking, air-conditioned facilities and up-to-date livery equipment. While those things are still

important, the emphasis is changing and today’s consumers are demanding significantly more from

death care practitioners. Take into account that society is changing, traditions are evolving and

new customs are being established. You are living and working in a dynamic global community.

The mind-boggling advancements in technology that you’ve experienced over the last 20 years have

forever changed and vastly improved the ways in which you serve your clients and run your business.

Computers, mobile phones, the Internet, email, funeral home websites….upon reflection, it’s all quite

astounding! Remember being excited about having an answering service and a pager? Providing Exemplary Customer Service in the Technology Era As consumers in a global economy, your clients are requiring comprehensive and attentive customer

service. They are asking for personalized products and customized ceremonies. Your ability to

successfully respond and deliver is paramount to meeting your clients’ needs, delivering exemplary

customer service and running a prosperous business. Technology is helping you accomplish all of

that and more! Consider for a moment your ability to print personalized service items like register

books, prayer cards and acknowledgement cards or to create multi-media DVDs that can be

presented at visitations and services.

Think of the many tools you have at your fingertips to facilitate the tasteful presentation and

personalization of caskets, urns, vaults and other revenue-generating merchandise. For those of you

in states where you are allowed to sell ancillary products such as monuments, markers, flowers and

catering services, the same holds true. The capacity to provide personalized products and customized

ceremonies has become the trademark of exceptional customer service for death care providers…

technology in the funeral home is the indisputable and inimitable link to your success. The extent

to which you meet your clients’ needs and run a successful business is no longer confined within the

walls of your air-conditioned facilities…it’s as limitless as the global reach of your website!

T



Welcoming Visitors to Your Funeral Home: A website is as important as a front door…

As increasing numbers of visitors from near, far and all points in between enter your

funeral home through your website, they have at their fingertips the opportunity to learn

many important facts about your firm. Guests are enabled to discover details about your

firm’s rich history, your skilled and dedicated staff, your comfortable and convenient

facilities, the wide variety of products, services and resources you offer and much more.

The most dynamic and vital information on your website is what the vast majority of

visitors come to find…the current and past obituaries of those who have come into your

care. Such accessibility to obituary information is essential to your firm’s reputation

and success; it is the information that’s most relevant to who you are and what you do on

a day-to-day basis; it keeps people coming to you through the doors of your facility and

through the portal of your website. By maximizing the local and global Internet vitality of

the obituaries appearing on your website, Tributes.com gives you the tools and technology

to enhance your customer service, build your reputation and grow your business, all as the

result of something you’ve been doing routinely…writing and placing obituaries!

Locally, Nationally or Globally: Equal Accessibility to Obituary Information on Your Website

There are several websites for locating high school and college friends; there are several

websites for posting a job or finding one; there are several websites for discovering

true love. Now there’s one website that presents obituaries both locally, nationally and

globally…..www.tributes.com. Tributes.com was founded by Jeff Taylor, the visionary

behind the online job recruitment website, Monster.com, in 2008 as the global online

resource for obituary news. As peoples’ connections have become less local and more

global, it’s not uncommon for family members, friends and colleagues to be unsure how to

find obituary or service information when a death occurs. On a local level, people in your

community and the surrounding areas know to visit your funeral home’s website in order to locate

current and historical obituary information. However, before Tributes.com came along, searching

for and finding obituary information on a regional, national or global level was a daunting task;

finding obituary information that ultimately lead visitors directly to your funeral home’s website

was virtually impossible! Obituary searches on leading search engines provide weak to non-existent

results and unless the visitor knows the name of your funeral home or the website of the newspaper

carrying the obituary, they are typically out of luck! While national and global search-ability of the



obituaries on your funeral home’s website may not seem to be that important at first glance, when

you consider how Internet technology has turned the world into a global community, the obituaries

on your funeral home’s website do indeed have a diverse and far-flung audience. Family members,

friends and colleagues of someone in your care are most often scattered far and wide. Tributes.com

and the Tributes Network of media partners, 100 TV stations strong and growing, bring everyone

together by leading them directly to the obituary listings on your funeral home’s website. The

business associate in Prague and the best friend down the street from your funeral home have equal

accessibility to the obituary information of someone they know.

As a Tributes Partner with your online

obituaries supported by Tributes.com,

visitors to your funeral home’s website can

even choose to receive email alerts whenever

you post a new obituary. How’s that for

accessibility? In subsequent sections, you

will learn more about the advantages of

becoming a Tributes Partner and how

Tributes.com supports the obituary section

of your website. You will also learn more

about the remarkable interactive features of

Tributes.com obituaries as well as how to



augment your funeral home’s website with a Funeral Home Profile on the Tributes.com Funeral Home

finder. Ultimately, you will learn how you can offer your clients the definitive personalized product, the

Eternal Tribute, as well as how to establish an additional revenue stream for your business through

the sale of online obituary and tribute products.

The Obituaries You Create: Serving Your Clients and Establishing a New Source of Revenue

Consider the enormous loss of revenue that newspapers have sustained as a direct result of the

continued migration of paid print materials to the Internet. This is clearly evidenced in the growing

number of classified job ads, personal ads and for

sale ads that are being posted online. In addition,

newspapers nationwide are in fast decline as

subscriptions are dropping at an every-increasing

rate as more and more people are turning to

the Internet for news, entertainment and other

information including obituaries.

Due to this phenomenon and dwindling offline

readership, newspapers have resorted to charging

exorbitant and ever-increasing fees for the

placement of the printed obituaries and/or death notices that they do publish. Undoubtedly you have

witnessed this to at least some extent in your funeral home’s service area. Perhaps your clients are

choosing to forgo spending their money on a brief print insertion that is available for only one day.

Unlike an obituary printed in the newspaper, a

Tributes.com obituary remains online permanently. Whether visitors access a particular obituary

through your funeral home’s website or through a search on www.tributes.com, they can return to the

obituary at anytime to leave condolences, share a memory, light a candle, email the obituary listing

to family, friends and colleagues…..all because of ease of accessibility and permanent availability.

If visitors access obituaries through a search on www.tributes.com, they will find pertinent contact

information regarding your funeral home including your logo and direct links to your funeral

home’s website and email address. Tributes.com gives you easy-to-use online tools for creating two

personalized products…..the obituary and the Eternal Tribute.

Have you ever considered the writing and placement of an obituary to be a value-added service or the

creation of a personalized product that you sell to your clients? Think about it….you’ve been writing

interesting and informative obituaries and/or paid death notices for years while the newspaper

industry has been getting most of the attention and all of the revenue as a result of your time and



effort! As a Tributes Partner, Tributes.com supports you in positioning obituaries as value-added

services and personalized products that you sell to your clients. Tributes.com presents those

obituaries in an attractive, engaging, interactive and robust format on your funeral home’s website.

Here’s how to start offering the families you serve lower cost, more feature-rich, permanent online obituary products than traditional print can provide while at the same time generating a new source of revenue for your business:

* Contact your Tributes Sales Representative to register a free account with Tributes.com.

Once registered, you will receive login credentials so you can start posting your obituaries using the

tools in our Funeral Home Central Dashboard.

* The wholesale cost for each obituary you post is $20.00; it includes permanent placement

on www.tributes.com and the Tributes Network of media partners, unlimited text, one photograph,

highlight service information, Share a Memory condolence book, Light a Candle gifting, Anniversary

reminders and a variety of other features.

* You can charge your families whatever retail price you deem appropriate as a separate line

item on your general price list designated as “Placement of Online Obituary”. Retail charges typically

range from $35.00 to $75.00 per online obituary. Another option is to build the designated value

of the online obituary into your basic service charge. In either model, the difference between our

wholesale cost to you and the designated value you attribute to the obituary becomes additional

revenue for your business.

However, basic online obituaries often fall short in providing families with a platform to properly

tell the rich and textured story of a loved one’s life. For those that want more, Tributes.com’s Eternal

Tribute, allows families to harness the vast capabilities of the Internet to tell their stories with the

full impact of multi-media while creating a permanent archive for generations to enjoy. And by

offering Eternal Tributes to your families, you create a new source of revenue for your business.

Here’s how it works:

* As a registered Tributes Partner, you will be positioned and equipped to offer your clients

the definitive personalized online memorialization product, an Eternal Tribute. At a wholesale cost

of $125.00, each Eternal Tribute you sell receives permanent online placement including unlimited

text, unlimited photos in a collage style interactive gallery, a choice of background music and themed

background graphics including custom themes, capability to upload DVDs and videos, links to



YouTube and other relevant websites e.g. charitable organizations, fraternal organizations, etc., as well

as all the feature-rich attributes of a standard obituary.

* You can charge your

families whatever retail price

you deem appropriate as a

separate line item

on your general price list

designated as “Online

Eternal Tribute”. The

suggested retail price for an

Eternal Tribute is $250.00.

A designated family member

is assigned ownership of

the Eternal Tribute and is,

therefore, subsequently in

control of its content. The

difference between our

wholesale cost to you and

the designated value you

attribute to the Eternal

Tribute becomes additional

revenue for your business.

* You will provide the designated owner of the Eternal Tribute with the required login

credentials and the Tributes.com system will guide them through the set-up process.

Naturally, support services for you and your clients are readily available from the

Tributes.com staff.

Special Pricing Program Funeral homes that standardize on the Eternal Tribute for every family can take advantage of a special, deeply discounted wholesale rate of $50.


* Creating an Eternal Tribute is a cathartic and healing experience that should involve the

resources and participation of as many family members and friends as the owner desires.

* Integrated, Tukios-powered DVD creation. Funeral Homes utilizing the Eternal Tribute

product can easily create a multimedia DVD slideshow for use during a wake, funeral or

memorial service leveraging the images uploaded to the Eternal Tribute for only $10 more.

Our Tukios-powered DVD creation wizard allows simple selection of a complete range of video

affects and transitions, themes and music. Photo editing is a snap and photo-to-music time

synchronization is fully automated.


E-commerce and Lead Generation:

The Online Obituary provides other revenue-enhancing benefits as well: e-commerce and lead

generation. In addition to the funeral home promotion integrated into each obituary you upload

to Tributes.com, you will also have the opportunity to populate 4 advertising blocks with your

own ad units to promote flowers, sympathy gifts, preneed planners, and other information on

your website. If you do not have established relationships with 3rd party vendors, Tributes has

relationships in place with a selection of sympathy gift vendors and floral providers that you

can leverage that will provide you a revenue share on product sales, a terrific way to effortlessly

increase revenue and offerings.

Obituary Hosting:

Enhanced Obituary Capabilities

Seamlessly Integrated into the

Funeral Home Website

Tributes.com is not a funeral home

website design company nor do

we host funeral homes’ websites.

Tributes.com does however host the

obituary sections of funeral homes’

websites and has formed strategic

partnership with several large web

hosting companies including MKJ,

Aurora Casket and FuneralNet,

providing their customers with

the benefits of Tributes technology

and state of the art online

memorialization products along with

the national distribution that the Tributes Network provides. Individual funeral homes that do

not have an affiliation with a website hosting company that has an established relationship with

Tributes.com can also easily leverage Tributes capabilities on their website.

When you register to become a Tributes Partner, Tributes.com offers a variety of options that

allow you to easily manage online obituary information on your funeral home’s website. By

submitting some basic information about your funeral home website’s design, we can create an

obituary section with the distinct “look and feel” of your site or leverage our XML capabilities to

create something more customized. The seamless integration is directed through the obituary



link on the navigation options on the home page of

your funeral home’s website. Your local and global

Internet guests will feel as though they never left

your funeral home’s website when viewing, editing

or purchasing obituary and tribute products. If you

are looking for a more robust obituary platform or

if you currently have a website without an obituary

section, Tributes.com provides the simple tools

and advanced technology that allow you to add

tremendous value to your existing obituary program.

Additional Benefits of Becoming a Tributes Partner Some additional benefits of being a Tributes Partner

include:

* Obituary Alerts by E-mail

Visitors can elect to be notified via e-mail any time your Funeral Home posts a new obituary or tribute

to the Tributes.com database. You and your visitors can also set up reminders to be notified of the 1 year

anniversary of someone’s passing or other important dates.

* Grief Recovery Resources

Your families and your staff will benefit from Tributes’ strategic partnership with two of the most notable

grief experts in the Unites States, John James and Russell Friedman, who regularly publish relevant

articles and personally answer questions in the Tributes.com Grief Recovery Center. John and Russell,

co-founders of the Grief Recovery Institute and authors of The Grief Recovery Handbook – now in its

20th edition, have been working with grievers for over thirty years. They have served as consultants to

thousands of bereavement professionals and provide Grief Recovery Seminars and Certification Programs

throughout North America and Europe.

* Exclusive Login Credentials

Your exclusive user ID and password combination allows you and your staff secure access to your account

on Tributes.com so you can easily post and edit obituaries and tributes, and maintain your Funeral Home

Profile.

* Funeral Home and Family E-mail Capture

This feature enables the Funeral Home to collect e-mail addresses of users who give permission to be

contacted. A funeral home may wish to collect these e-mail addresses for promotional purposes and to

provide a family with a list of e-mails generated during the interaction with a specific obituary.

* Exclusive Facebook App

Our exclusive Facebook application allows a funeral home to seamlessly integrate obituary listings onto

a Facebook business page. The app creates a new, dedicated and customized area highlighting the most



recent obituaries and allows visitors to post condolences without ever having to leave the

Facebook environment. Condolences left on Facebook are fully synchronized with the

obituary on the funeral home’s website.

* Mobile

Tributes-powered obituaries are presented in a mobile format optimized for smart phones

such as iPhone and Android when viewed on those devices. Visitors to a funeral home’s

website are automatically presented with the mobile interface when accessing obituaries

from a smart phone and feature the funeral home’s logo, the full obituary text, detailed

service information, messages of condolence and photos.

As Tributes.com continues to grow as the #1 destination for obituary news, we are harnessing

the value of our global reach and extending it to our Tributes Partners to help them grow their

businesses and their online presence. If you haven’t established a website for your funeral home or

if you want to augment your current website, the Funeral Home Profile and Funeral Home Finder

features of Tributes.com will extend your brand far beyond your local service area. For funeral

homes without a website, a profile on Tributes.com allows you to establish a web presence for free!

A Funeral Home Profile is easy to set up using the tools on our Funeral Home Central Dashboard. A

Funeral Home Profile on Tributes.com provides the following features and benefits for free to all of

our Tributes Partners:

* A preferred listing in

Tributes.com’s Funeral

Home Finder that

promotes your funeral

home when people

anywhere in the world

are searching for funeral

homes and funeral services

in your local market.

* Unlimited text space to

describe your business

and highlight the types of

services you provide.

* An elegant slideshow

highlighting exterior and

interior photos of your

facilities, photos of your

staff members, etc.



* An integrated view of all your obituary and Eternal Tribute listings that have been posted on

Tributes.com

* Advertising space to market additional services, e.g. preplanning, support groups and grief

counseling, to your families and others who view your Funeral Home Profile.

* Key promotional elements of your funeral home profile including logo, contact information,

website address and advertising that will also be featured on all the obituaries and Eternal

Tributes that you create when they are displayed on Tributes.com and across the Tributes

Network.

Funeral Home 5 Year Obituary / Tribute Revenue Forecast

Annual Volume of Obituaries

% of Families Purchase Standard Obituary

Obituary Retail Cost

Obituary Wholesale Cost

Funeral Home Profit

% of Families Purchase Eternal Tribute

Tribute Retail Cost

Obituary Wholesale Cost

Funeral Home Profit

TOTAL

TOTAL 5 YEAR PROFIT

250250250250250

25%40%50%60%75%

$60$55$50$45$40

$20$20$20$20$20

$2,500$3,500$3,750$3,750$3,750

75%60%50%40%25%

$350$325$300$275$250

$125$125$125$125$125

$42,188$30,000$21,875$15,000$7,813

$44,688$33,500$25,625$18,750$11,563

$134,125

Y1ASSUMPTIONS Y2 Y3 Y4 Y5

Funeral Home Benefit Analysis



Tributes.com Provides Funeral Homes With Flexible Solutions To Improve Their Obituary OfferingsTributes.com partners with thousands of funeral homes to enhance their online obituary offerings -

from multi-media obituary and tribute products; to national distribution services; to helping families

create beautiful, permanent memorials that can be shared with family and friends, regardless of

where they live.

Tributes.com is helping preserve memories and celebrate lives in ways that are not possible with

traditional print obituaries and at a fraction of the cost. Our flexible solutions are adaptive to the

needs of any funeral home partner and any funeral home website to drive more value into your

obituary service.

Become a Tributes Partner. Contact Us Today! Tributes, Inc.192 South St., 5th FloorBoston, MA 02111617-337-9440

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the evolution of the obituary

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